Hi folks. I ran across a paper by Kirk Fitzhugh that says, among other things, that finding fossils such as Tiktaalik doesn't constitute the fulfillment of an evolutionary prediction or evidence for evolution. I couldn't find anyone in the literature who mentions Fitzhugh or his paper so I thought I'd ask you guys what you thought of his conclusions. Fair warning: it is an excessively dull and tedious read and I myself fail to really grasp his argument.

Anyway, if you have access to the publication,the paper can be found here:

If anyone with a better grasp of logic than I have cares to wade through it and assess his argument, that would be cool. It seems counter-intuitive that finding what a theory predicts we should find doesn't constitute evidence for that theory, but he's not just a creationist nutjob (the other half of the paper trashes ID). If no one feels like subjecting themselves to this paper I won't be surprised, so no pressure.

Please correct me if I'm wrong - I don't want to wear my brain and eyes out if I haven't understood his premise. He seems to be saying that if you use evidence of, say, fossils to arrive at an evolutionary or supernatural hypothesis, you can't go on to use that evidence to confirm the hypothesis. I'm not sure whether that's correct, but even so it's not a problem. Darwin studied fossils and living creatures. Since then people have not only studied many more fossils and living creatures but have also studied genetics in great detail. In a similar but ludicrous vein, the IDCreationists have studied the Bible to come up with their hypothesis and have then contemplated their navels and studied bacterial flagella. One group has produced sense, the other nonsense.Has he anything significant to add?

He flags this - see some of the comments underneath flagging the same Elizabeth Pennisi article entitled 'Biology Evolution Heresy? Epigenetics Underlies Heritable Plant Traits':http://sandwalk.blogspot.co.nz/2013/09/ ... etics.htmlAccording to Larry Moran, if I understand him correctly, this finding in a type of plant is not that new.